M.E. Sparks is an artist and educator currently living in Winnipeg, MB, Treaty 1 Territory. Sparks works primarily with paint and canvas. Through a practice of pulling apart and recombining borrowed forms, both art historical and autobiographical, she looks for the moment an image loses its representational solidity. Recently, she has been exploring material possibilities of unstretched painted canvas. Paintings are cut apart, layered and draped in an effort to obstruct and reimagine both the pictorial space of painting and its historical narrative. Sparks holds an MFA from Emily Carr University (Vancouver) and BFA from NSCAD University (Halifax). She is a recipient of project and research grants from Canada Council for the Arts, Winnipeg Arts Council, BC Arts Council, and Arts Nova Scotia. She has participated in artist residencies in Canada, Germany and Finland, and was a finalist in the 2016 and 2017 RBC Painting Competition. Recent exhibitions include and a Rag in the Other at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art (Kelowna, 2022), We can only hint at this with words at the Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art (North Vancouver, 2022) and A Fine Line at Trapp Projects (Vancouver, 2021).